Business Competitions

DFJ East Coast Venture Challenge

Top Prize: $250,000 in venture financing
Host: Columbia Business School in New York City

Open only to students of Ivy League schools (plus New York University and Carnegie Mellon University) the winner of the DFJ gets $250,000 in seed-stage funding plus six months of free office space in New York. The second annual event (to be held in the spring of 2008) will connect startups with venture capitalists. Last year's winner was SteriCoat, a company that develops antimicrobial coatings for medical devices, which has won a half-dozen other business-plan competitions around the globe.